All That and a Witch's Hat
by Omnicat
Summary: Candy apples, check. Funky pumpkins, check. A little sympathy? No, of course not, are you kidding?


**Title:** All That and a Witch's Hat

 **Author:** Omnicat

 **Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge:** Marvel Studio's _Captain America_ -relevant movies, from _Captain America: the First Avenger_ to _Black Panther_.

 **Warnings:** None.

 **Characters & Relationships:** Steve x Bucky

 **Summary:** Candy apples, check. Funky pumpkins, check. A little sympathy? No, of course not, are you kidding? **/ 921 words**

 **Author's Note:** Written for dreamerfound in the 2018 Trick or Treat Exchange on AO3. Enjoy!

 **II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II**

 **All That and a Witch's Hat**

"Easter Island."

"Tourists."

"The Amazon rainforest."

"Mosquitos and spiders and snakes, probably."

"Antarctica."

"It's _Antarctica_ ," Steve stressed.

Bucky pulled a face and made a wobbly motion with his hand. "Still. For the quiet, it _might_ be worth it."

"Well, have fun then, but I'm not that nostalgic for the freezer just yet."

"Spoilsport." Bucky heaved a deep, deep sigh. "It's just too damn early."

The two of them were in the kitchen, hard at work. Almost frantically so, some might say. There were bowls of oranges and mini chocolate bars and other sugary treats on the counter, and Steve was making candy apples and popcorn balls. Bucky's job, they'd decided, would be carving a pumpkin – so of course they'd bought _a dozen_ pumpkins. They had paper bats-and-ghosts and Frankenstein-and-blood-bags festoons and a couple of felt witches to put in the windows. They had strings of plastic lights shaped like little spider webs.

And they only had all of these things because this modern age had the internet to look up current Halloween etiquette on, and stores that were open even on sundays. It certainly wasn't because Halloween had such great timing. Bucky was loving every minute of it, don't get him wrong. He just wished someone had explained this part of how the holiday had changed to him sooner.

They were _wildly_ overdoing it, Bucky thought, but wasn't that how Americans did everything these days? The website said it would make them fun, involved neighbors, anyway, which was enough for him to set aside his knee-jerk feeling that this was scandalizing and enjoy the thrill of it all.

"Same date it's always been," Steve pointed with a bland smile that fooled no-one.

"Thanks, Captain Obvious."

"Seriously though, there's a perfectly simple solution to this problem," Steve said, stirring his toffee. "It's called a calendar. I can get you one for Christmas, if you can't find such a strange, newfangled contraption in the stores _you_ frequent."

"I have three. Four if you include the one on my phone. I hung one in the downstairs toilet and I don't even know where I picked up _that_ habit. I just never look at them. What's today's date?"

Steve rolled his eyes. "We wouldn't be having this conversation if you didn't know –"

"Don't make fun of my amnesia, Steve, geeze."

Now Steve snorted. "October 31st."

"See?" Bucky said, gesturing triumphantly with his carving knife. "They make Halloween last for a month nowadays and I still didn't see the actual day coming. It's like a conspiracy to _make_ me check the calendar every day or something!"

The date had just sort of crept up on them. Steve had been abroad until the day before yesterday doing Avenger things, and Bucky had been... busy... enjoying his retirement. Sure, it hadn't felt busy at the time, but looking back it clearly had been, or this wouldn't have happened, now would it? Those goats hadn't fed themselves back in Wakanda, and they certainly hadn't started when T'Challa had sent them along as a housewarming gift upon Bucky's return to the States.

"Relax, Buck. We'll be done well before sundown."

There was a moment of silence as they both waited for something to spontaneously catch fire. If anything was going to happen, now would be the time.

"Sure, we'll make it because we have to," Bucky allowed eventually. "But I like to take my time carving up bodies. Really savor the experience, you know?"

"You're not –" Steve frowned, first in confusion at the odd phrasing and then, when he caught sight of Bucky's innocent expression, in suspicion. He rounded the kitchen table to check, toffee-covered spoon in hand, and burst out in incredulous laughter. Looking around at the rest of Bucky's handiwork, his amusement only grew. "You're kidding me. All of them?"

Bucky cut a final flourish from the cape of his stick figure vampire (mid biting a victim) and confirmed: "All of them."

He'd carved a game of hangman out of his first pumpkin out of sheer annoyance, but as soon as he started the second one, he couldn't think of anything more fun. He had a stabbing, a sasquash (or something, pumpkins weren't the most precise medium when it came to furry monsters) kidnapping, a mummy, an alien with a laser blaster (who maaaaaybe bore a slight, stick-figure-y resemblance to Mantis, but what she didn't know couldn't hurt her), a Loki... all of them with X-es for eyes and lolling tongues, of course.

"We need to take pictures of this."

"How modern of you."

"If we're gonna make this big a deal out of Halloween just to be good neighbors, we might as well go all the way. Now who's the starving artist, huh?"

Steve dug his phone from his back pocket, changed his mind, and ran out of the kitchen to find himself a real camera. When he returned, Bucky said:

"Just because the enhanced metabolism keeps me from getting fat, doesn't mean what I've been doing is _starving_."

"You're not getting any candied apples unless they're leftover after the kids stop coming, then. Don't look at me like that, it's legend-building."

The house smelled _divine_. The very idea of not getting dibs on Steve's snacks was sacrilege. "That's it, the next one is gonna be you, on ice."

"Immortalized by my favorite artist? What a hardship."

"Oh, come here, you."

Bucky dragged him down for a kiss, the utensils in their respective hands forgotten. How all that toffee ended up in Steve's hair in the end was anyone's guess.


End file.
